Queen’s Speech

Lord Dannatt Excerpts

Thursday 13th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dannatt (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I have chosen to speak in today’s section of the debate on the humble Address rather than next week on defence, as I place the maintenance of the integrity of the union as the highest priority of all the issues confronting Her Majesty’s Government today.

Other noble Lords have spoken on the importance of the maintenance of the union between England and Scotland, but I wish to focus on Northern Ireland as an integral part of our United Kingdom. Apart from England, where I was born and live, Northern Ireland is the other part of the United Kingdom in which I have lived and worked for extended periods of my life. Self-evidently, I have not spent time in Ulster for fun but as a member of the British Army, seeking to secure the safety of the people of Northern Ireland and to secure that Province as an integral part of our United Kingdom.

With that objective in mind, it has been profoundly depressing to have heard both the outcome of the Ballymurphy inquests on Tuesday and the Government’s response to those judgments thus far. That it should have taken three months short of half a century for 10 families in Ballymurphy to be told definitively that their loved ones were not gunmen, as previously alleged, but innocent members of the community is nothing short of a scandal. Sadly, it is a scandal matched by the Government’s slow response to these inquest findings. Perhaps the Minister, in answering this debate, will explain why the Prime Minister felt unable to follow the example of Mr David Cameron in offering a full and unqualified apology in the House of Commons, as he did after the publication of the Saville inquiry into Bloody Sunday. To do so only in a telephone call to the First Minister and Deputy First Minister is just not good enough. Self-evidently, the 10 families were not on that call, although I am aware that the Prime Minister has now written to them.

If the objective of retaining Northern Ireland within our United Kingdom is the goal, we should look to the future, not the past. We should look for ways to ease tensions between communities and build trust. With that in mind, I believe that we can learn more from the collapse of the trial of soldiers A and C than we can from the Ballymurphy inquest and the calls for the soldiers concerned to stand trial. As the trial of soldiers A and C showed, information, recollections and statements made 30, 40 or nearly 50 years ago invariably constitute inadmissible evidence, which is why another way to seek the truth about unsolved deaths and attacks must be found. Of course the pursuit of truth leading to justice is an inalienable principle and no one is above the law, but where truth cannot be reached effectively through a criminal justice system due to a lack of admissible evidence for whatever reason there must be another way.

After several meetings with the former Attorney-General, Sir Geoffrey Cox, I believed that a process of questioning by investigators of potential witnesses to a death or a serious crime could be based on a presumption not to prosecute unless new and compelling evidence was produced. Such an arrangement could have benefited civilian and military personnel equally, and allowed families, as in Ballymurphy or in Bloody Sunday, to discover the truth and gain closure to their anguish. However, the flaw in this approach—certainly for veteran soldiers—is that, under the Good Friday agreement, the Westminster Attorney-General gave his prosecuting authority up to the Northern Ireland prosecuting authorities. In Northern Ireland, experience shows that there is a predisposition to test evidence in court even if it is thin, thus questioning with a presumption not to prosecute will not work.

I am therefore now drawn to the Northern Ireland Office’s preferred option of the introduction not of an amnesty but of a qualified statute of limitations. By this, the investigation into any alleged crimes—potentially committed by civilians and soldiers alike—that took place before the Good Friday agreement was signed in April 1998 should not be subject to prosecution. In this way, I believe that witnesses would be more open, the likelihood of reaching the truth would be increased and closure for families would be more likely to be achieved.

In a pure sense, this is far from ideal; indeed, I would describe it as the least worst option. However, it is better than a stalemate and a continuing cause of tension between communities and a cause of anxiety to military veterans. I am told that all parties in Northern Ireland are likely to oppose such a statute of limitations, but I believe that the Westminster Government must be robust on this issue. I am also told that the Dublin Government would oppose it, but I respectfully remind the Irish Government that this is exactly what they used on 7 November 1924 as the way to end the acrimony following the civil war of 1922-23 in Ireland immediately following independence. So there is a successful precedent.

Finally, it is to be welcomed that the future of Northern Ireland has returned in recent years from the streets to Stormont and from the bullet to the ballot box, but lingering legacy issues arising from the Troubles stand in the way of a better future. The least worst option of a qualified statute of limitations is one way to tackle this problem and let more truth increase the chance of reconciliation.

Northern Ireland: Legacy of the Troubles

Lord Dannatt Excerpts

Wednesday 5th September 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Dannatt]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how they propose to address the legacy of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, with particular regard to the role of the security forces.

[Lord Dannatt (CB)]

My Lords, I first thank the usual channels for making time for this short but important debate; I also thank the Minister in advance for answering it.

The most depressing aspect of the subject under discussion is that we have to have this debate at all. After the shameful investigations and allegations of misconduct by the military in Iraq and Afghanistan, one might have thought that the appetite for further investigations into the conduct of members of the Armed Forces in other conflicts might have diminished. Sadly, this is not so. Despite the Iraq Historic Allegations Team looking at over 3,500 allegations, the only case that has come to court has been that of a bent investigator. Yet attention has returned, this time to Northern Ireland.

Many noble Lords will have seen the powerful intervention in the media by Field Marshal the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Bramall. The noble and gallant Lord focused on the 2010 Saville report into Bloody Sunday and opined quite correctly that Saville should have been the end of Bloody Sunday. On publication of that report, the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, apologised for the actions of a very small number of soldiers and the residents of Londonderry seemed to accept that apology. But now the case of Sergeant “O”, one of those who gave evidence to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Saville, has become prominent eight years later—some 46 years after the incident itself. There is a horrible suspicion among veterans that the non-self-incriminatory basis on which they gave evidence to Saville has been broached, and that some soldiers now stand liable for further investigation and are in fear of a knock on the door. I would be grateful for a categorical assurance from the Minister that the confidential nature of the evidence given to the Saville Inquiry has not been used in subsequent investigations. There is considerable scepticism in the veteran community on this point.

The case of Sergeant “O” is not unique. The case of Corporal Major “H” is also worrying. He was questioned over the case of a young man with learning difficulties, who was shot dead on 15 June 1974. However, after a joint investigation by the civil and military police, within a year, the Ministry of Defence was informed that there would be no prosecution. I have seen a copy of that letter. Nevertheless, the Historical Enquiries Team, set up in September 2005 by the Blair Government, decided to look once more at the Corporal Major “H” case but concluded in 2013 that there was no basis to reopen it formally. After the Historical Enquiries Team was closed down in 2014, a new legacy investigation unit returned to the “H” case, leading the Police Service of Northern Ireland to arrest the corporal major on 21 April 2015 and deport him to Northern Ireland for interview. He was interviewed 26 times over the next four days—16 more times than Harold Shipman—and was charged with attempted murder on 24 April 2015. A complicated court case is still ongoing. The corporal major is now over 75 years old and a sick man.

That knock on the door is not confined to elderly retired paratroopers, riflemen and cavalrymen. On my last day as Chief of the General Staff on 28 August 2009, the final scheduled appointment in my diary, before I left the Ministry of Defence for the last time in uniform, was with two investigators from the Police Service of Northern Ireland’s Historical Enquiries Team. They had travelled from the Province to London to quiz me about the killing of a young man in Belfast some 36 years before. Having explained the circumstances of the day in question, I assumed that the matter was closed. This was not so, as one of my corporals—now 76 years old—was subsequently questioned, with the police finally accepting that events in our statements, nearly 40 years before, were an accurate account of a hostile attack which had been responded to professionally within the terms of the yellow card and within the law.

Time precludes description of other high-profile cases similar to those of Sergeant “O” and Corporal Major “H”, but there are troubling issues with them all. First, while the Army kept extremely good operational records, the terrorists did not. This makes a very uneven playing field on which to conduct these retrospective investigations.

Secondly, all allegations were investigated by service and civil police at the time and statements were taken. It therefore raises the question of why revisiting whatever evidence that may still exist 30 or 40 years later is likely to bring any greater clarity.

Thirdly, of the 2,547 cases referred to the PSNI Legacy Investigation Branch, 2,265 are deemed terrorist cases and only 282 to be British Army/Royal Ulster Constabulary cases—just 10%. But the reality is that 90% of cases that were killings by nationalist and loyalist terrorists were murder by any description of the word, while the 10% attributable to the security forces were deaths brought about by troops and policemen who, in the vast majority of cases, were doing their lawful duty. There is a very strong suspicion that, for the reasons I have just outlined, the low-hanging fruit of security forces cases are being plucked first and, on past evidence, are likely to be so by the proposed historical investigations unit.

Fourthly, while over 500 prisoners convicted of terrorist offences were released on licence as part of the Belfast agreement, another 365 royal pardons were handed down over the last 35 years and over 300 on-the- run letters were issued. In the same period, just four servicemen were convicted for murder, while another 10 were prosecuted and acquitted. Does this not speak volumes about the integrity of the Army?

To move to the present, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Karen Bradley, has launched an open consultation entitled Addressing the Legacy of Northern Ireland’s Past. In the preamble to the consultation, she says that the legacy proposals should be,

“balanced, fair, equitable, and crucially proportionate”.

From what I have described so far, historical and current activity is demonstrably not,

“balanced, fair, equitable, and crucially proportionate”.

Furthermore, from a military veteran’s point of view, this consultation is already flawed in that it has precluded at the outset the introduction of a statute of limitations ending these historical investigations. However, I am aware that, in pursuit of the objective to be “equitable”, there is a concern that a statute of limitations to protect former members of the security forces would mean that terrorists would, in effect, be given an amnesty as well.

So the Army is caught in the crossfire between the Sinn Féin nationalist agenda to rewrite history and paint the IRA as having fought some form of just war against their self-styled oppressive state, and the Democratic Unionist Party and Ulster Unionist Party’s insistence on bringing predominantly nationalist terrorists to justice. It is also worth remembering that the proposed historical investigations unit will examine only fatalities, ignoring the 40,000 people—including 6,000 soldiers—injured during the Troubles, without investigating those responsible for over 15,000 explosions in the Province during that time. Is this “equitable”? What is to be done?

First, it should be recognised that the British Army is a national institution which should be regulated under the authority of the Westminster Parliament and not allowed to become victim to the intrigues of Stormont, whenever that Assembly might reconvene. The welfare and duty of care towards servicemen and military veterans should clearly be championed by the Secretary of State for Defence and not left to the outcome of a consultation by the Northern Ireland Secretary.

Secondly, it should be remembered that incidents in which members of the security forces fired their weapons were fully investigated by the military and, where appropriate, the civil police at the time. In the vast majority of cases, a decision was made that lethal force had been used within the prevailing rules of engagement and no further action was necessary or appropriate. I submit that those investigations should be confirmed now as legal, binding and final. Furthermore, I submit that any subsequent reinvestigation breaches the principle of double jeopardy.

Thirdly, if the principle of double jeopardy is accepted, it would be quite appropriate for a statute of limitations to apply to those cases and individuals that had already been investigated. This would protect policemen and soldiers who were doing their duty in pursuit of the sovereignty of the Crown’s right to rule over the whole of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland but, crucially, it would leave exposed to the full rigours of the law those terrorists who have never been exposed to investigation. That, I submit, is,

“balanced, fair, equitable, and crucially proportionate”.

In conclusion, I add that to many soldiers fighting in the Province during the 1970s and 1980s in particular, it felt like a war zone, although the IRA insurgency was never branded as such. Indeed, we should not forget that in 1972 alone, 102 British soldiers lost their lives fighting in the Province. Of course, the peace process since the Good Friday agreement has brought better times but the continuation of that peace cannot—and must not—be at the expense of more soldiers’ lives ruined.

Soldiers fully understand von Clausewitz’s classic dictum:

“War is but a continuation of politics by other means”.


But to paraphrase Clausewitz, perhaps Miss Bradley in the Northern Ireland Office might reflect on the reverse: a peace process should not be a continuation of war by other means. The nationalist agenda to divorce Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom is as alive today as it was throughout the 38 years of the Troubles. The British Government must not sleepwalk into that agenda.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

My Lords, all speakers bar the Minister should heed the point on timings: as soon as two minutes appears on the clock, speeches should be concluded immediately. If not, the cumulative effect will undoubtedly squeeze the Minister’s remarks.